Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle control apparatus applied to a hybrid vehicle and capable of executing an enlarged regeneration control for increasing an amount of electricity (or electric energy) recovered to a rechargeable battery and a vehicle speed limit control for controlling a vehicle speed to a speed smaller than an upper limit vehicle speed.
Description of the Related Art
There is known a vehicle control apparatus (hereinafter, will be referred to as “the conventional apparatus”) configured to execute the enlarged regeneration control. In particular, the conventional apparatus is configured to execute a control for executing following processes (1) to (3) as the enlarged regeneration control (see JP 2015-19521 A).
(1) A process for predicting a target stop position or a target deceleration end position where a vehicle is stopped by a driver of the vehicle along a scheduled traveling route on the basis of route information on the scheduled traveling route acquired from a navigation device.
(2) A process for performing an informing for prompting the driver to release an acceleration pedal when the vehicle arrives at a suitable first position before the vehicle arrives at the target stop position.
(3) A process for increasing a value of a regeneration braking force to a value larger than the value of the regeneration braking force generated upon the normal release of the acceleration pedal when the acceleration pedal is released after the vehicle arrives at a second position after the aforementioned informing is started.
According to this enlarged regeneration control, the large regeneration braking force is generated at an early timing and thereby, an amount of thermal energy consumed by a braking of the vehicle using a friction braking device can be decreased. Therefore, the amount of the electric energy (that is, regeneration electric power) recovered to the rechargeable battery can be increased and thus, fuel consumption of the vehicle can be decreased.
The conventional apparatus disclosed in JP 2015-19521 A is configured to execute the vehicle speed limit control or an ASL (Adaptive Speed Limitter) control. In particular, when the traveling speed of the hybrid vehicle becomes equal to or larger than a predetermined upper limit vehicle speed with an ASL mode having been selected by an ASL switch operated by the driver, the conventional apparatus controls the traveling speed of the hybrid vehicle to a speed equal to or smaller than the predetermined upper limit vehicle speed by decreasing at least a driving force of the hybrid vehicle.
In addition, the conventional apparatus disclosed in JP 2015-19521 A is configured to forbid an execution of the enlarged regeneration control when the ASL mode has been selected.
Thereby, when the hybrid vehicle travels under the ASL mode, a deceleration of the hybrid vehicle by the enlarged regeneration control is not performed and thus, the driver can be prevented from feeling discomfort.
However, when the execution of the enlarged regeneration control is forbidden, the amount of the electricity recovered to the rechargeable battery is decreased. Therefore, in order to recover a large amount of vehicle traveling energy to the rechargeable battery as the electricity, it is preferred to permit the execution of the enlarged regeneration control when the ASL mode has been selected and the driver is unlikely to feel strong discomfort.